Port hopes to become big player in wind industry

As the plan to build a $168 million electric power generating wind farm in Lake Erie inches forward, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority is making plans for its docks to be the site of an active staging area for construction materials for the pilot wind project.

As the plan to build a $168 million electric-power-generating wind farm in Lake Erie inches forward, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority is making plans for its docks to be the site of an active staging area for construction materials for the pilot wind project.

The hope is to give Northeast Ohio the opportunity to be a Great Lakes hub for the assembly of materials — some manufactured nearby, hopefully — needed to build, operate and maintain what could be a sizable offshore wind industry, as well as a growing onshore wind market.

On Tuesday, July 3, the staff of the Ohio Power Siting Board recommended that the state allow construction to move forward for Icebreaker Wind, a string of six wind turbines eight miles north of Cleveland in Lake Erie that would be the first freshwater wind farm in North America. That's a key step along the road to governmental approval that could be completed by December, said David Karpinski, vice president of operations of the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCo), the nonprofit project developer that has partnered with a Norwegian firm, Fred. Olsen Renewables in Icebreaker Windpower Inc.

If all of the remaining approvals can be wrapped up by year's end, the turbines could be operational by 2020.

"This is an important project, not only because it will be staged here at the port and launched here," said William Friedman, president and CEO of the Port Authority. "I'm just a believer in the potential of generating renewable energy and then, maybe more important in the long run, in the supply chain — manufacturing component parts and servicing the windmills. I just think that's a great fit for us."

Friedman, Karpinski and others believe this 20.7 megawatt (MW) pilot project could jump-start interest in Great Lakes wind the way a similar, 30 MW pilot wind farm off Rhode Island, operational since late 2016, has spurred interest on the East Coast. That created 300 construction jobs and has prompted at least 1.8 gigwatts (GW) of interest in offshore projects in four Atlantic Coast states, according to Recharge, a business intelligence provider for the renewable energy industries.

For now, most wind turbines are built with imported European parts, since Europe's wind industry is further along than the United States.

"We have a vision of a robust industry of multiple projects happening over a 10- to 20-year period," Karpinski said. "We don't know how it will play out, but there's room for thousands of megawatts, for several thousand megawatts of wind (on the lake). We don't know how it's going to play out until we build this first one."

A 2017 U.S. Department of Energy study estimated the potential for Great Lakes wind power generation at 135 GW. FirstEnergy Corp.'s Perry Nuclear Generating Station is rated at nearly 3.8 GW.

"The thing about offshore wind that's exciting from a job creation standpoint is it has so many opportunities besides just manufacturing the turbines," Karpinski said. "There's the logistics of moving parts in and out of the port, getting them to the job site, renting cranes, hiring construction workers and hiring people to take care of the turbines when they go down."

A wind industry that generates 5 GW of power, and its supply chain, could create 8,000 jobs in Ohio by 2030, according to a 2010 economic report LEEDCo commissioned. The small, pilot Icebreaker Wind project is expected create nearly 600 jobs for construction and beyond.

The report identified a number of Ohio companies with relevant capabilities, including Cleveland's Parker Hannifin Corp., which makes hydraulic systems and power cables; Timken Co. of Canton, a maker of bearings; and Molded FiberGlass Cos. of Ashtabula, which makes blades and turbine parts.

In addition, Friedman said a firm like the Great Lakes Group, which builds tug boats at its shipyard facility in Cleveland, could build the specialized vehicles needed to install wind turbines and foundations.

John Colm, executive director and president of Wire-Net, a manufacturing advocacy group, said the key will be getting past this single pilot project to a point where there is demand for several hundred turbines a year.

Offshore wind is still in the pilot stage in the United States, since it isn't economically competitive. Still, installation of offshore wind capacity grew by 87% worldwide in 2017 over 2016, according to a report by the Global World Energy Council, an international trade association.

While an offshore wind industry is years off, onshore wind is already a robust industry. The U.S. has more than 54,000 operating wind turbines generating 89 GW of power across the U.S., creating a market for manufacturers. And generating capacity is growing at 8% annually, according to the Global Wind Energy Council's 2017 market update.

"When you've got that kind of demand, then potentially a (company) could justify making blades at that kind of volume," Colm said. "There's a long way to go between a pilot and several hundred turbines a year."

Friedman said the Port Authority has identified a dock at its east end, north of FirstEnergy Stadium, as the likely staging area, and its board of directors has approved hiring a consultant to evaluate the need for improvements. He expects it will need some beefing up to handle the key pieces of the wind structures. The foundation, for example, is a 390-ton "mono bucket" that would be assembled on the dock and ferried out and planted in the 60-foot-deep lake bed.

"Ports in Europe have benefited and are key elements in their offshore wind energy," Friedman said. "We would like to be in an advantaged position if we had the kind of heavy-capacity dock structure because the foundations are massive."